Mirtazapine and Me: Why I Won't Be Held Down...

Some of you may be wondering, Rebecca, why haven't you written your own blog post in a while? Well, blogging community, I think you'd better stick the kettle on, make a cuppa in your favourite mug and take a seat. Mine's a little bit of milk and two sweeteners, ta. But we need to talk. Over the last few months of blogging I've spoken about dealing with mental health and trying to remove the stigma around mental health issues. However, I have only ever really spoken in depth about Generalised Anxiety Disorder. I should probably talk about something else. I also suffer with depression, admittedly I only really started to begin dealing with it a week or so ago but it's taken several crying episodes because I was physically too scared to get out the door and talk to someone, quite a lot of days where my only triumph of that day was being to get out of bed and put some people clothes on (Although, I do celebrate those achievements quite highly on bad days.) and in the end, one complete outburst to my parents about how desperately lonely I was feeling, until I would finally ring the doctor's and admit that I couldn't keep doing it on my own anymore. Which now I realise, there is absolutely no shame in doing.

But, let's rewind a minute. How did I end up feeling so lonely when I have so many wonderful, caring and loving friends and family around me? Well, a lot of it is to do with my anxiety, or morph. Morph is a little tiny being which is the personification of my anxiety and I believe him to be quite fitting too. (You'll soon realise why if you spent any of your childhood watching art attack and Morph's adventures. But, please, CITV, don't sue me for this, please.)

This is the point where I'm about to sound completely insane but it's okay, the Doctor said I'm perfectly normal! (Sort of.) Morph is always there but usually he's very small, small enough that he could probably sit on my shoulder (low-levels of anxiety, the good days.) but every now and again he gets triggered and grows until he's piggy-backing me, weighing me down and stopping me from doing whatever I want to do. Usually this is social gathering or interactions, some days, not being able to leave my room. So, as you can imagine this inability to socialise properly and feeling "trapped" had a pretty heavy knock on effect.I spent many nights not sleeping properly, not eating properly and then generally feeling quite low and worn down, most of the time because I was getting very scared of even going in for my lectures. But, I made it in to my lectures and did my work, I tried all of my methods that I've posted about on here. Self-care boxes, meditation, hypnotherapy, talking to my friends and family but nothing was working properly for me, I would feel better for a while but then would slip back into a very horrible low feeling.

As I said above, after a very tearful phone call to home, I accepted I needed some sort of help. I cannot stress enough how fantastic my doctor was! Please, anybody reading this who might be going through the same, don't hesitate to go to your GP. And if your GP isn't very supportive, try somewhere else, you will get the help you need. They are trained to listen. No, they will not just think you're going crazy, and they won't just palm you off as over-emotional either. I was prescribed Mirtazapine, a sedative anti-depressant to help me sleep and get me back into a routine again, which will help settle morph (Yay!) I'm also in the process of being referred to LetsTalk, a mental health service here in Hull which will provide me with some talking therapy to deal with the actual emotional cause of this depressive episode and to help me deal with my anxiety because, overall, that's what's caused this.

Although, I fel like I'm already dealing with this, now it has a label, my depression can now be personified and I've chosen Winston Churchill's Black dog, because it's something I can control in my mind's eye. Right now, although the dog is following me around everywhere, it's on a leash, so I'm in control. there will be days where it's curled on my lap and bringing me down but there will also be days where I can leave it asleep back home and it will not bother me.

This blog post is really just to make people aware of why I might have long breaks between posts, that it's okay to say when you're struggling because only then can you truly get the help you need, and it's not always medication! And more importantly, so people know that I am determined to get through this. I will be the rock music listening, power lifting, hard studying, marine biologist that I was a few months ago. Although, I don't think I've ever stopped being 3 of those things on the list, haha! I must also stress to my uni friends, I can't drink on these tablets, I'm sorry but no more welly vodka or JD for me. But you can save up and buy me a drink when we're through this, of course. ;)

If anybody has anymore questions about anything in this blog post then please don't hesitate to message me.